


Touch Me With Fire

by kasiapeia



Series: Nothing Can Break Me Except Your Absence [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, F/M, Multi, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-10 18:05:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15297054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kasiapeia/pseuds/kasiapeia
Summary: People like them don't get happy endings.Hawke had fallen in love with a man she could never be with, and Fenris...Fenris had fallen for a woman who'd only ever had eyes for someone else.





	Touch Me With Fire

_My Creator, judge me whole:_  
_find me well in Your grace._  
_Touch me with fire that I be cleansed_  
_Tell me I have sung Your approval._

_\-- Canticle of Transfigurations 12:5_

Fenris can’t remember the last time Kirkwall had been this quiet.

The streets are all but empty, and the few souls that dare to venture out in the aftermath of the war that had almost torn the city-state apart are as silent as ghosts, rummaging through the rubble with glazed over eyes, and moving as though they wade through honey. It’s been months, but the recovery process has been slow, the chaos too great for any one to know even where to begin trying to pick up the pieces.

He doesn’t know where his feet are leading him, but he wanders through the once-familiar streets like he had set foot in Kirkwall for the first time only yesterday morning. But his heart knows that this is his home, even if the chaos and destruction has rendered it all but unrecognisable. His heart still knows the way to the Hanged Man even if all the street signs have been knocked to the ground, letters burnt away by mage fire. He knows the places they used to gather and celebrate; him, Merrill, Varric, Aveline, Carver, Isabella, Sebastian, and…

Hawke.

He hasn’t seen the Champion of Kirkwall since that fateful day. She had watched, almost silent, as Meredith had been consumed from the inside out by the lyrium that had fuelled her, and then… Then she had looked Anders in the eyes, her hands curled in fists by her side in an attempt to steel herself—in an attempt to keep from shedding the tears that pricked at her eyes. It had worked, but only just.

_“If you come back here again, if I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”_

She had loved Anders once, and it had almost sickened him. They were far too innocent, far too childish for this world that was not kind to people like them. He remembers mocking the way they used to look at each other when they thought no one else could see them. He remembers hands interlaced beneath the table, stealing moments they would not have gotten if their lives had taken a different direction. Had the two apostates lived their lives as the Chantry demanded they ought to, they never would have had the chance to fall in love. They’d have died alone, locked up in a tower far away from the rest of society.

Once, long ago, Fenris had thought that that was what mages deserved. Mages, he had thought, were capable of the cruelest things, capable of causing unimaginable destruction. But if the war had proven anything is that neither mages nor mortals are innocent, and both are dangerous, if only in different ways.

“Fenris.”

The elven warrior looks up from the stone pavement at the sound of his name, surprised yet not all that surprised to discover that his feet have, unknowingly, led him to the front of a once-familiar estate. The ivy had died, untended to without Leandra’s nurturing touch, and the painted crests on the shields hanging by the front door had been scrubbed off with wire, judging by the scratches in the steel. But the stonework is still the same, even if the touches that had made this home almost as familiar as his own are now gone. Even the lanterns by the door have cobwebs, and that’s when he realises he hasn’t been here since before… Since before…

Since before there had been more on the horizon than just crumbling spires of marble.

Green eyes meet blue as he finally looks at her, and part of him wishes that he hadn’t. Elira Hawke, the so-called Champion of Kirkwall, looks like she shouldn’t be standing. The slight olive tone to her skin from her father’s Antivan blood is all but gone, leaving her sickly pale, and exposing the dark purple bruises beneath her tired eyes. Untended to, her short, midnight hair had grown out, and now brushes her shoulders. She pushes it awkwardly behind her ear as it falls across her face, but it does little to help her appearance in any way. She still looks like one of the dead whose bodies still rot in the streets without anyone to come bury them.

“Are you leaving too?”

The question takes him by surprise, and he frowns at the mage standing before him. “Leaving?” he repeats.

Elira looks down at her hands, her nails broken, and crusted with dried blood. Small scabs mark her knuckles. A rather unpleasant, shiny pink marks runs across her palm, like she had cut it open on something and had haphazardly tried to heal it. She had never been a good healer, but then again, she’d never had to be. She had always left that to Anders. He hadn’t cared how much pain he had been in; if he had seen that Hawke was injured in any way, he had dropped everything to run to her side to stitch her wounds closed. But now that he’s gone…

“Yeah,” she says, her voice sounding raspy, and unused, like she has spoken to no one but her dog in the past two months. Knowing her, it’s possible. “Leaving. Carver’s leaving on Warden business soon. Isabella and Varric have been called away by the king of Ferelden no less. Merrill and Aveline are staying, but they’re… trying to rebuild after… After…” She lets out a sigh, and then, quietly: “They might as well be gone. I haven’t seen or heard from them once.”

“I’m not leaving.”

She looks back up at him, a small flicker of hope in her glassy eyes. “Then why are you here?”

“I…” He doesn’t know. “I wanted to see you. We haven’t spoken. I did not know if you were even alive.”

She shifts her weight between her feet, picking at one of the scabs on her hands. “Do you… want to come in?”

He doesn’t recall saying yes, but soon, he finds himself within the halls of the once-familiar Hawke Estate, but it, like Kirkwall, is quieter than he remembers it being. Sandal and Bodahn had left town shortly after the conflict had broke out, and apparently, Hawke had dismissed her servants sometime since the last time he had been here. He can’t help but think that the place is far too large for one lone mage and her dog. Already, the estate has fallen into disrepair, cobwebs and dust on every surface, and the air is stale, like she hasn’t opened a window at all during the past two months.

She’s quiet as she flits about the kitchen—he wonders if she even knows how half of the things in here works; she’s never been a particularly good cook—setting a kettle on the stove. She grabs a matchbox, tossing it aside when she realises its empty, and sets her gaze on the wood burner. She snaps her fingers, and a small flame sparks into existence before dying. She tries again, and the fire is a little bigger, lasts a little longer, but it too dies before catching on the kindling.

“Hawke—” he starts, already reaching for his flint and steel, but the anger that rolls off of her in waves makes him hesitate. She’s almost shaking with her frustration.

She tries snapping her fingers again, and this time, she can’t even conjure a single flame. “Fuck this,” she mutters to herself, grabbing two bottles of 9:21 vintage red off of a nearby shelf, and handing it to him.

He takes it, silent, but his silence isn’t an indication of a lack of concern. Two months ago, Hawke could have conjured a roaring wildfire with little more than a thought. She could have razed the entire world to ash, but now, she can’t even light an oven.

“Elira,” he says this time, and she finally stills. How many people use her name anymore? To the rest of the world, she’s Hawke, or Champion. How long will it take for her name to be forgotten? How long will it take for the world to forget that the woman who had been at the centre of the mage rebellion had been a real, living person? “How are you?” It’s a stupid, stupid question, and he already knows the answer.

She’s falling apart at the seams.

Elira takes a sip from her bottle of wine, unable to hide the way her hands tremble. “I haven’t slept in a week,” she says softly, “and when I do, I have nightmares.”

“Of?”

A quiet, bitter laugh escapes her. “Nothing pleasant, I can assure you. For the most part, I’m forced to confront my mistakes. My father, my sister, my mother, my…” She can’t even bring herself to say his name. The strongest woman he knows, and she can’t even bring herself to say his name. “Is it wrong?”

“Is what wrong?”

“Is it wrong that I miss him?” she asks, taking a seat on the table. “I wake up from my dreams, shaking, and I reach over to his side of the bed without a second thought, only to remember that he’s gone. That I banished him. I find myself setting a place for him at the table sometimes, and when I catch myself, I find that I no longer have an appetite. Cats show up on my doorstep sometimes, looking for him. I told him to stop giving them milk, but he never listened, and I want to scream at them that he’s gone, and he’s not coming back.”

Fenris had never liked Anders. His views on mages had changed over the years, but mages like Anders had always scared him. He had always been too passionate, he had thought. He’d have killed to set mages free— _had_ killed to set mages free. But Elira isn’t him. She had cared for Anders more than he can even comprehend. “It’s not wrong,” he says. “You loved him.”

She swallows. “A part of me still does.”

He knows what she means. He had always hated himself for it, but he had cared for her once too, but he had loved her enough to stand to the side and watch as she fell in love with another. Seven years had changed a lot, but it couldn’t change that.

Fenris takes a drink.

And then another one.

“I feel like I should hate him,” Elira mutters to herself, running her finger around the lip of the bottle. “I wanted to see the mages free, but I didn’t… What he did to the Chantry… How are we supposed to convince the world that mages can be trusted if we started this world by attacking the Chantry? But then again… I feel like this is the only way this could have ended. People like me don’t get happy endings.”

“If anyone deserves a happy ending, it’d be you, El,” he mumbles without looking up, but when he does, her gaze is distant and far-off again, and then he realises the mistake he had made. “Forgive me. I had forgotten that had been his name for you.”

“You called me that long before he did,” she says softly, closing her eyes. “But then you left.”

His expression twists with regret. He can still remember that night like it had been yesterday, but then again, he had done his best not to forget it. Her lips had tasted of cinnamon and Antivan spices he couldn’t name, and her hair had smelled of Crystal Grace. It had always been her favourite flower, he remembers. She used to go down to the markets to buy it as a perfume from a Ferelden trader. “It was for the best,” he says.

“Was it?”

“I loved you, Elira,” he says softly. She doesn’t need to know that, just like her with Anders, a part of him still does. “You did not feel the same.”

“You never gave me the chance!” she snaps at him. “One night. One night we shared, and then you left. Is that why you came, Fenris? To remind me that my life would be a whole hell of a lot better if I had fallen in love with you and not—” She cuts herself off, pressing her lips together. Even angry, she can’t bring herself to say his name. “If you loved me, why did you leave? Did you regret it that much?”

Fenris takes another drink, warmth starting to pool in the pit of his stomach. No, he hadn’t regretted it. Still didn’t, but it’s not as simple as she wants it to be.  He hadn’t regretted it, but he had known that she would, given time. Even then, she had started to fall for Anders, with his quiet charm, and his wit, and his stupid fondness for the stray cats that roamed the streets. But she had been, and still is, far too good of a woman for an elf like him. People would give their lives just to spend one night with the Champion of Kirkwall. They would fall at their knees and worship her as she deserves to be worship. He couldn’t do that. Still can’t.

He remembers how she had appeared, sprawled across the sheets with her black hair falling across her eyes. Her olive tinted skin had almost seemed to glow in the flickering firelight, creamy breasts rising and falling beneath the cloth band she wore in place of a corset. And her ocean coloured eyes had been full of admiration—admiration he, a former slave and an _elf_ , hardly deserved.

And what had he said, again?

_“All I wanted was to be happy… just for a little while. Forgive me.”_

“We could have been happy together, I think,” she continues, “but it’s as I said: people like me don’t get happy endings. You deserve to be happy.”

“And you don’t?” he returns. “After all you’ve done? After all you’ve sacrificed?”

“It’s because of what I’ve sacrificed that I don’t get to be happy. Look at me, Fenris. There isn’t a single thing I still have that could make me happy. I live in my family home, by myself, and the title I spent years earning is nothing more than a painful reminder of what I’ve lost. My friends, unlike me, can bring themselves to move on, and so they have. Without me.”

Fenris glowers. “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“Why _are_ you here?” she asks. “Do you want something from me? You said you wanted to see me, but no one wants to see me unless they want something from me. You need money? Help yourself. You know what the combination to my safe is. You want a place to live? Take my house. I can afford a new one. Preferably one with fewer memories too. You want—”

“I wanted to make certain you were still alive, Elira,” he snaps. “For two months, no one has seen you. I wanted to know that you were all right.”

“Well the truth is that I’m not, Fenris.” She gets to her feet, resisting the urge to throw her bottle of wine across the room, and watch it shatter against the opposite wall. Instead, she slams her fist down on the counter, reopening the wounds on her knuckles. “Fuck,” she says under her breath. “I hate this. I hate all of this. For seven Maker-damned years, I’ve given everything I’ve had for Kirkwall, and what do I have to show for it? A few new scars, and the reminder that I’ll never get to see the man I love ever again? Countless dead on my conscience?”

“You didn’t kill them, Elira.”

“Didn’t I?” she snarls. “Who do you think gave him the means to blow up the Chantry? Who do you think got him all those expensive, rare materials to make his concoction? Who do you think suspected, but bit her tongue because nothing else fucking mattered to her when Anders was concerned?” Her voice breaks on his name, and she almost collapses against the counter as she weeps. “Their deaths,” she says in a small voice, “are just as much my fault as they are his.”

Fenris gets to his feet, and slowly makes his way over to her. “El,” he murmurs, tilting her chin up so she’s forced to look at him even as she tries to pull away. “What happened wasn’t your fault, and even if you had known, could you have stopped him? You believed in the war, and you believed in him. Are you to be condemned because you loved?”

“Yes,” she whispers, and she looks seven years younger, as she had when they had first met. Scared, innocent, and desperate to do what was right. “I should be. How much blood is on my hands, Fenris?”

“Do you think I should be condemned?”

“No,” she says. “Why would you even ask me that?”

“Then tell me, with absolute certainty, that there isn’t just as much blood on my hands as there is on yours,” he says. “Tell me that I didn’t know of Anders’ plan. Tell me that I couldn’t have stopped him too. Tell me that I haven’t killed countless innocents and countless more guilty.”

She swallows. “I… I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because it isn’t true.”

“Then why would you think the same of yourself?” He can tell that she doesn’t know the answer. He can tell that she’s been doing what she’s been doing out more out of necessity than anything else. And then, before he knows what’s happening, her lips are on his, her fingers threaded through his white hair as she pulls him close.

She has him pressed against the counter, the corner of the surface digging into his back, but he hardly notices. She’s desperate, and alone, and for the night, he can make it better. It won’t last, and tomorrow, they’ll go back to how they were before. She won’t ever love him, not the way she had loves Anders, and he finds that he doesn’t care. He’ll take what he can get, even if it’s nothing.

Maybe she’s right. Maybe people like her— _people like them_ —don’t get happy endings, but he’d settle for an okay one. They deserve that much, don’t they? After all they’ve sacrificed, after all they’ve lost? Maybe they don’t get to be happy, but at least they deserve to be at peace.

And maybe that will be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This was basically one long excuse to write some Dragon Age 2 angst because I've been in a BioWare games kind of mood. The Hawke in this is the same Hawke in _Let Chaos Be Undone_ and _Though the Darkness Comes_.


End file.
